Updated Sept. 10, 2026: Chelsea Quintern wrote Potomac Local on Thursday evening to correct two name spellings, note that her daughter Rylee was also at the meeting, and report that Joshua’s post-meeting scan showed no evidence of disease.
Coles District Supervisor Yesli Vega’s chief of staff, Chelsea Quintern, returned to the Prince William Board of County Supervisors dais on Sept. 1 with her son Joshua beside her as the Board marked Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Their daughter, Rylee, was also present. Quintern later said Rylee has not had cancer but “experienced a major change in her life because of childhood cancer, too.”
Last September, Quintern told the Board that the family stood in the same chamber when Joshua was in remission. Three weeks later, she said, the cancer returned for a third time.
Joshua has Burkitt’s leukemia, Quintern said — one of the most aggressive cancers a child can face. When he relapsed, she said there was no proven second-line treatment waiting for him. The family entered what she called uncharted territory, with few options and no guarantee any of them would work. He underwent treatments that had never been used that way for a child before, she said.
He was at the meeting. Quintern kept the description brief: a little boy who has endured more than most adults ever will, standing beside her after being told treatments did not work and facing a relapse with no road map for what came next.
Quintern told the Board a scan was scheduled two days after the Sept. 1 meeting. In an email Thursday night, she said those results are in and Joshua still has no evidence of disease.
She said a family friend, a boy named Talen, died days earlier of the same cancer. His loss, she said, is a reminder that for too many childhood cancers, medicine still has further to go. Quintern said she planned to share the story with Talen’s family in Australia, where a celebration of life is set for early next week.
She asked people to pray for the children, their families, doctors and researchers; to “go gold” in September and explain why when asked; to support childhood cancer research; to donate blood; to join the bone-marrow registry if able; to support families whose lives have become hospital rooms, appointments and scans; and, most importantly, not to look away because the subject is hard to talk about.
“Awareness matters because these children matter,” she said.
Vega thanked chiefs of staff in other supervisors’ offices for their compassion and collaboration. She said Quintern is her chief of staff and that for about a year and a half Chelsea and her family have gone through so much. Through the ordeal, Vega said, Quintern was an advocate, researcher, caregiver — and never once let the Coles District office falter.
The Board’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month proclamation framed the remarks. Quintern’s asks — prayer, gold awareness, research support, blood donation, the bone-marrow registry, and not looking away — closed the moment on the dais.
